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BigCommerce for WordPress Review – A WordPress Ecommerce Solution

BigCommerce is a powerful and popular solution for anyone creating online shops and ecommerce stores. BigCommerce is a well-established player, and they also recognize the power of content. This is why they recently released a new ecommerce solution built specifically for WordPress users. In this BigCommerce for WordPress review, we’ll introduce you to this new solution that allows you to combine the best features of BigCommerce and WordPress to maximize your efficiencies on both fronts.

If you plan to create a new ecommerce store, or you’re looking for a new ecommerce solution for your existing online shop, make sure you read this review to find out if BigCommerce for WordPress is the right option for your project.

About BigCommerce for WordPress

BigCommerce for WordPress Review

As the name suggests, BigCommerce for WordPress was built to facilitate the integration of these two popular platforms.

If you want to create your website with WordPress but let BigCommerce handle the ecommerce side of your business, then this integration should be interesting.

This BigCommerce for WordPress review will explore this new product in more depth. However, for a quick overview, it’s fair to say that you can centrally manage your product catalog and the customer and order data with BigCommerce, while WordPress takes care of how your website or store looks and functions.

So if you’re interested in combining the world’s most popular content management system with a powerful cloud commerce platform, read on to learn more.

Who is BigCommerce for WordPress For?

WordPress Dashboard

The BigCommerce and WordPress integration is aimed at those who value the power of content marketing while also wanting access to a leading ecommerce solution. Using WordPress for your website allows you to follow in the footsteps of countless brands who use their website- particularly their blog- to tell their story, connect with their audience, and grow their following.

But by adding BigCommerce to your project, you can let WordPress handle the content side of things, while BigCommerce takes care of the ecommerce duties.

Here are some of the reasons why you might want to consider BigCommerce for WordPress for your project:

Create Your Own Community

If you’d like to build a community around your brand and connect personally with your customers, instead of (or as well as) selling through third-party marketplaces like Amazon or eBay, creating your own WordPress website is one way to achieve this. If that sounds attractive, BigCommerce for WordPress could be right for you.

Organic Traffic

Another benefit of using WordPress for your website and ecommerce store — with BigCommerce providing the online shop functionality — is the greater potential for acquiring organic traffic. Rather than having to rely on advertising, such as PPC adverts, as your sole way of getting customers to your store, you can use the content you publish on your WordPress website to increase the visibility of your brand in the search engines.

WordPress is well known for its content management capabilities. So if you’d like to engage in content marketing to grow your audience, there’s no better platform to use for many projects than WordPress.

Control the Sales Journey

Having your website, rather than selling through a third-party marketplace, has another benefit. Being in control of your website, or storefront, allows you to guide potential customers through a sales funnel, rather than having to close the deal on the first point of contact.

This should be particularly interesting if you’re selling high-value items that aren’t often bought as impulse purchases. With your website, you have the time to educate the customer with the content on your site. You can also demonstrate how your products can help with their problems, and show you’re a business they can trust.

You can also encourage potential customers to join your email list, allowing you to communicate with them further. Whether they stay on your site or leave it, you can maintain contact with them throughout the sales cycle. Then, when they’re ready, they can make the purchase.

If you like the sound of any of that, then WordPress has a proven track record of creating websites that can deliver these results. Combining WordPress with BigCommerce provides everything you need to create your online store where you own the shopping experience, from start to finish.

With the release of the BigCommerce for WordPress integration, you have a straightforward way to use the two together.

Best Features of BigCommerce for WordPress

As we’ve just seen, there are many great reasons to use BigCommerce with WordPress for your online shop or ecommerce project.

Now in this section of our BigCommerce for WordPress review, we’ll cover some of the main features and a few more reasons why this could be a good option for your business. After that, we’ll explore how this plugin and the integration it facilitates works.

Best of Both Worlds Approach

WordPress Customizer

WordPress now powers around  43 percent of all websites, which suggests it’s an accomplished piece of software. BigCommerce might not be the most widely used ecommerce solution available today. However, it’s one of the most powerful store builder options around. The fact that BigCommerce is used by some well-known brands, including Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry’s, should give you an idea of its capabilities.

WordPress is ideal for creating custom websites. Even if you choose an off-the-shelf WordPress theme, you can use any of the many drag-and-drop page builder tools to create custom product pages, unique product category pages, and bespoke landing pages to promote your latest offers.

Not only that, but WordPress was originally created with blogging in mind. Thanks to this, whatever type of content you want to publish on your WordPress website, you probably can. So if you want to use your online shop to tell your brand’s story, instead of just listing products, then WordPress is more than up to the task. As mentioned earlier in this BigCommerce for WordPress review, having freedom over your website allows you to leverage content marketing to increase traffic and grow your audience.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, is an ecommerce system first and foremost. It has the power to run online stores and ecommerce operations of all shapes and sizes. By combining the two with using BigCommerce for WordPress, you can take control of content publishing and the user experience, using a powerful, purpose-built ecommerce system to manage your store.

One BigCommerce Control Panel for Multiple WordPress Websites

If you’re running multiple online stores or selling on a range of different platforms, you can manage all of the ecommerce activity through one central BigCommerce control panel. This also applies if you want to publish your catalog of products on more than one WordPress website. BigCommerce for WordPress allows managing your products, orders, and shipping updates through one control panel hosted by BigCommerce.  Depending on the supported integrations, you can then deploy those products where you like.

Intuitive User Interface and Experience

BigCommerce for WordPress allows you to combine these two systems through a well thought out integration. Thanks to this, the two user interfaces complement each other, rather than clash. This makes it easier to manage your store, benefiting your customers, due to an intuitive user interface and shopping experience.

Unrestricted Scalability

The BigCommerce software-as-a-service platform has been built to handle ecommerce projects of all sizes. By integrating your WordPress website with BigCommerce through this plugin, you can ensure that your ecommerce store can scale.

Rather than installing plugins that turn your WordPress website into an ecommerce platform by adding ecommerce features directly to your site, you can instead leverage the hosted BigCommerce service and let their servers do all the heavy lifting. In contrast, your WordPress website does what it does best by handling the content management duties.

Instead of trying to turn WordPress into something it isn’t, you can connect it to a powerful, purpose-built ecommerce platform with an endless capacity to scale.

Strong Focus on eCommerce Security

Compared to running a regular website, managing an ecommerce store comes with lots of responsibilities. Arguably the main responsibilities are related to security issues around payment processing and customer data.

By letting BigCommerce handle the ecommerce side of things, while still using WordPress for the rest of your website, you can effectively outsource the burden of PCI compliance. Your customers will still enjoy a seamless and secure checkout process. But you should hopefully be able to sleep a little easier knowing your store is PCI compliant.

Worldwide Coverage

Payment Gateways

Wherever your customers are, there’s a high chance BigCommerce can accommodate them and their preferred payment methods. BigCommerce – and your WordPress website if you choose BigCommerce for WordPress – supports over 65 payment gateway integrations. These options cover over 100 countries and 250 local payment methods.

BigCommerce even supports financing options, giving your customers more buying power. According to the BigCommerce website, financing can lead to 44 percent higher checkout conversions.

AMP-Enabled and Gutenberg Ready

BigCommerce for WordPress is a modern plugin that’s in constant development. Due to this, it should come as no surprise to learn that it’s fully compatible with the latest WordPress editor version, Gutenberg. You can use the Gutenberg block-based editor to create your store, using products imported from your BigCommerce account.

The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin is also fully AMP-enabled. This ensures that the products from BigCommerce listed on your WordPress website are mobile-friendly for fast loading times and maximum ease of use.

Built the WordPress Way

Like the WordPress software itself, you get access to the key BigCommerce for WordPress plugin files. This will help ensure the integration works with your WordPress website. This is especially useful if you’ve customized your theme and site. There’s a full set of online documentation available to support you with using the plugin and extending it.

How Does BigCommerce for WordPress Work?

Publish Products

The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin, created by BigCommerce, is available from the official WordPress plugin directory.

Once installed on your WordPress website, the plugin will connect your site to your BigCommerce account or prompt you to start a BigCommerce trial. You can then start the process of copying your products from BigCommerce. These products are added to your WordPress website as custom post types. All the necessary ecommerce pages are created for your site, too. This includes the shopping cart, checkout, and account area, to name just a few.

As BigCommerce is a truly feature-rich ecommerce platform, once you’ve installed the BigCommerce for WordPress plugin on your site, all those features will be available through your website.

However, those features won’t be installed or running on your WordPress website, taking up precious resources, and potentially slowing down your site. Instead, they will all be hosted on the BigCommerce servers. Not only that, but orders aren’t processed by your WordPress website either. The heavy lifting occurs on the BigCommerce servers, instead of your web hosting account. So no matter how large or busy your store gets, you’ll be able to scale the ecommerce operations without losing speed or suffering downtime.

BigCommerce for WordPress Review Final Thoughts

Essentially BigCommerce for WordPress lets you use the best aspects of both platforms. WordPress takes care of your website’s content management and user experience, while BigCommerce handles the ecommerce functionality.

While WordPress is free to use, BigCommerce isn’t. You’ll need a subscription to their premium service to use this platform. WordPress is indeed free to use. But if you want to create an ecommerce store with WordPress, you’ll probably need to purchase some extra premium plugins. Taking this into account makes BigCommerce a more affordable solution. This is especially true once you start looking at all BigCommerce ecommerce features.

Financial considerations aside, you could try and turn WordPress into an ecommerce platform by installing plugins that add extra features. However, that could cause problems regarding site performance and security issues. There’s also the management of your platform to think about. This typically includes keeping everything running smoothly and your choice of third-party plugins working together. Instead, you can combine WordPress with BigCommerce and take a best of breed approach to building your ecommerce business. Thanks to the release of BigCommerce for WordPress, it’s never been easier to connect WordPress to a powerful hosted ecommerce solution.

BigCommerce takes the ecommerce pressure off your WordPress backend. Try it out here!

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Joe uses WordPress to create websites of all types and loves sharing his experiences of using this software with other users. If you need a steady stream of great content for your website, or you want the latest WordPress news and review then check out his writing services and WordPress blog.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. irynakozak says:

    Wow, you have great templates. We may use them in the future for our work

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